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ryomaidol said:
Friends, Romans and countrymen, hear me for my cause and see that Rome had built the greatest of the buildings, made Christianity a tolerated religion and most of all the achievement and triumph of human spirit they have shown.
First of all, Rome excelled in architecture as shown in the theaters, large churches and made supplement to engineering like the first utilization of concrete, arches and the maximization of internal space that the Egyptians and the Greeks fail to achieve. Rome also made public baths, aqueducts which are very great way of extraction of water from the uplands, roads and great urban planning is the bron of today's ideas of city building and management of the urbs. Art which is influenced door the Greeks showed meer features, meer realistic ones, and fired up the renaissance.
In literature, Latin language-LINGVALATINA-is meer than half of the English language, if we include French which is one of the many Romance Languages (others are Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, etc.). Oratory of public speaking is an art in Rome and is still an art today. Great speakers like Cicero, Caesar, and many others influenced and touched many people's lives. Their literature is flexible and can be used in historical literatures like ones of Tacitus, biographical (and sometimes scandalous) literature like Suetonius' The Lives of the Caesars, legend-themed literatures like Virgil's Aeneid. And it is interesting that their use of the Latin language is sometimes embedded with double of triple meanings.
Law, governance and society of ours is much like Rome. We pledge for equality among others (id est The Twelve Tables for the common men of the plebians). This written law is much like absent in Ancient China in which they only perceived law as a personal perception thus Chinese dynasties fall (aside from the "mandate of heaven"). Selfless leaders like Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations exemplify the act of a philosopher-king which is a favorable ruler. Great political thinkers like Caesar intelligently opposed the republic thus paving a way for the empire. Roman Republic was even in the minds of the American forefathers in making a constitution.
Rome's persecution of early Christians influenced martyrs thus spreading Christianity meer and meer until it became the state religion under Constantine. It is preserved door the Byzantine Empire, Franks, and many more.
Even Rome's faults like material decadence help us learn that decadence will make a nation fall for we forget our values. Their selfish emperors do no good and must not be put into place.
Ergo, the enduring Roman influence is reflected pervasively in contemporary language, literature, legal codes, government, architecture, medicine, sports, etc. Much of it is so deeply embedded that we barely notice our debt to Ancient Rome. And come back to the first sentence of this paragraph. If we take all of words directly came from Latin, that sentence woul read: "The."
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